CHAPTER VII
LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF CARLYLE
In presence of the pathetically tragic spectacle of Carlyle in his old age, who can have the heart to enter into his domestic life and weigh with pedantic scales the old man's blameworthiness? Carlyle survived his wife fifteen years. His brother John, himself a widower, was anxious that they should live together, but it was otherwise arranged. John returned to Scotland, and Carlyle remained alone in Cheyne Row. He was prevailed on to visit Ripple Court, near Walmer, and on his return to London he wrote, 'My home is very gaunt and lonesome; but such is my allotment henceforth in this world. I have taken loyally to my vacant circumstances, and will try to do my best with them.'
Carlyle's first public appearance after his sore bereavement was as chairman of the Eyre Committee as a protest against Governor Eyre's recall. 'Poor Eyre!' he wrote to a correspondent, 'I am heartily sorry for him, and for the English nation, which makes such a dismal fool of itself. Eyre, it seems, has fallen suddenly from £6000 a year into almost zero, and has a large family and needy kindred dependent on him. Such his reward for saving the West Indies, and hanging one incendiary mulatto, well worth the gallows, if I can judge.'
Carlyle accepted a pressing invitation to stay with the Ashburtons at Mentone, and on the 22nd of December he started thither with Professor Tyndall. He was greatly benefited in health, and at intervals made some progress with his Reminiscences. He returned to London in March, and on the 4th of April 1867 he writes in his journal: 'Idle! Idle! My employments mere trifles of business, and that of dwelling on the days that culminated on the 21st of last year.' About this time his thoughts were directed to the estate of Craigenputtock, of which he became absolute owner at his wife's death. All her relations on the father's side were dead, and as Carlyle thought that it ought not to lapse to his own family, he determined to leave it to the University of Edinburgh, 'the rents of it to be laid out in supporting poor and meritorious students there, under the title of "the John Welsh Bursaries." Her name he could not give, because she had taken his own. Therefore he gave her father's.'
On June 22nd, he writes in his journal: 'Finished off on Thursday last, at three p.m. 20th of June, my poor bequest of Craigenputtock to Edinburgh University for bursaries. All quite ready there, Forster and Froude as witnesses; the good Professor Masson, who had taken endless pains, alike friendly and wise, being at the very last objected to in the character of "witness," as "a party interested," said the Edinburgh lawyer. I a little regretted this circumstance; so I think did Masson secretly. He read us the deed with sonorous emphasis, bringing every word and note of it home to us. Then I signed; then they two—Masson witnessing only with his eyes and mind. I was deeply moved, as I well might be, but held my peace and shed no tears. Tears I think I have done with; never, except for moments together, have I wept for that catastrophe of April 21, to which whole days of weeping would have been in other times a blessed relief.... This is my poor "Sweetheart Abbey," "Cor Dulce," or New Abbey, a sacred casket and tomb for the sweetest "heart" which, in this bad, bitter world, was all my own. Darling, darling! and in a little while we shall both be at rest, and the Great God will have done with us what was His will.'[39]
When the Tories were preparing to 'dish the Whigs' over the Reform Bill, Carlyle felt impelled to write a pamphlet, which he called Shooting Niagara, and After. It was his final utterance on British politics. Proof sheets and revisions for new editions of his works engrossed his attention for some time. He went annually to Scotland, and devoted a great deal of time on his return to Chelsea to the sorting and annotating of his wife's letters.
Early in 1869 the Queen expressed a wish, through Dean Stanley, to become personally acquainted with Carlyle. The meeting took place at Westminster Deanery: 'The Queen,' Carlyle said, 'was really very gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The interview was quietly very mournful to me; the one point of real interest, a sombre thought: "Alas! how would it have cheered her, bright soul, for my sake, had she been there!"'
When Carlyle was in constant expectation of his end, he—in June 1871—brought to Mr Froude's house a large parcel of papers. 'He put it in my hands,' says Froude. 'He told me to take it simply and absolutely as my own, without reference to any other person or persons, and to do with it as I pleased after he was gone. He explained, when he saw me surprised, that it was an account of his wife's history, that it was incomplete, that he could himself form no opinion whether it ought to be published or not, that he could do no more to it, and must pass it over to me. He wished never to hear of it again. I must judge. I must publish it, the whole, or part—or else destroy it all, if I thought that this would be the wiser thing to do.'[40]
Three years later Carlyle sent to Froude his own and his wife's private papers, journals, correspondence, reminiscences, and other documents. 'Take them,' he said to Froude, 'and do what you can with them. All I can say to you is, Burn freely. If you have any affection for me, the more you burn the better.' Mr Froude burnt nothing, and it was well, he says, that he did not, for a year before his death he desired him, when he had done with the MSS., to give them to his niece. 'The new task which had been laid upon me,' writes Froude in his biography of Carlyle, 'complicated the problem of the "Letters and Memorials." My first hope was, that, in the absence of further definite instructions from himself, I might interweave parts of Mrs Carlyle's letters with his own correspondence in an ordinary narrative, passing lightly over the rest, and touching the dangerous places only so far as was unavoidable. In this view I wrote at leisure the greatest part of "the first forty years" of his life. The evasion of the difficulty was perhaps cowardly, but it was not unnatural. I was forced back, however, into the straighter and better course.' The outcome of it all is too well-known to call for recapitulation here.
In February 1874, the Emperor of Germany conferred upon Carlyle the Order of Merit which the great Frederick had himself founded. He could not refuse it, but he remarked, 'Were it ever so well meant, it can be of no value to me whatever. Do thee neither ill na gude.' Ten months later, Mr Disraeli, then Premier, offered him the Grand Cross of the Bath along with a pension. Carlyle gracefully declined both.